Some thoughts on Halo

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I am a long time Halo fan. SO, some thoughts on the series...

1. Why cant you wield the energy sword in Halo CE? My hypothesis is because this was the first Halo game ever, and the goal was to make a shooter. Little if any thought was put into melee combat. But when Halo 2 came along, you actually got to play as a sword wielding Elite for roughly half the game, so they had to include game mechanics for that.

2. Why was dual wielding dropped in Halo 4? Firstly, the mechanic makes little sense for clip fed weapons...I mean how was the player reloading one SMG and shooting with the other at the same time??? Second, Halo 4 contained very few weapons that were likely candidates for dual wielding, so they decided to drop it all together.

3. Why no assault rifle in Halo 2? My hypothesis is that dual wielding was new to this game, and the SMG was dual wieldable, so they simply decided to go with that instead of assault rifle. I missed it because there was, in CE, no better anti Banshee weapon than the humble assault rifle (seriously, its the best weapon in that game for shooting them down, no BS).

4. I loved the flying target lock on that the rocket launcher had in Reach and Halo 2. I think it was dropped from 3 and 4 simply because it made the weapon just to good.

Some of my favorite weapons:

Brute Spike Rifle: excellent speed and killing power, and the blades on the ends are great for smashing Flood.

Needler: One of the games best weapons for killing Elites backed by groups of grunts. Just target the Elite and let them have it, and the explosions will also kill some grunts. The other grunts often flee after you kill the Elite, allowing you to conserve ammo. This is very good in Halo 2, where the needler is dual wieldable with another needler. Note that this weapon is awful against Jackal Fist Shields though.

Battle Rifle: Best all around weapon of the franchise IMO. Excellent accuracy and power, scoped, and the assault rifle is a better choice only if you have lots of grunts right in your face or you are fighting Flood.

Shotgun: For fighting Flood, nothing beats it.

Brute Hammer: Excellent for fighting bullet sponges like Brute Chieftains with power armor. You can usually one hit kill them with this weapon even on higher difficulty levels.

Spartan Laser: I one shot killed a Hunter with this in Reach and it was SO satisfying.

Brute Shot: A long time favorite, esp the Halo 3 version with the larger mag and less bouncy grenades. Try it on Flood and watch them fly apart.

I was quite into the Halo series, although I was not too into the recent ones, there was just something not quite the same with it. I probably could say something about the lore reason why certain guns are only available in some games, like the first game, Combat Evolved, came from Reach, which was supposed to have high tech weapons that were being made for an attack on the Covenant, they had gathered the Spartans, along with exploding pistols and the high capacity assault rifles. I was actually not such a fan of the assault rifles when I first played the games as a young teenager, but it became a favourite of mine in what I would call something like treating the game like a dance of stunning effect of the rifle but not wasting bullets.

But the real reasons is that there tends to be a sort of feeling of balance in the games. Where I would say Halo 2 decided to go more in Covenant weapons for shields, and human weapons for armour (unshielded). THe main human weapon became the battle rifle for headshots, and the pistols required more of a skill for such, a good mix being added with the plasma pistol dual strategy. The dual SMG became the new assault weapon, indeed taking more advantage of the dual weapon thing, with some impressive power, but reduced range, and or taking advantage of reload time. I would say the following games became more complex with their balances. Swords probably became more as they thought that they became better to program it.

My favourite all time would probably simply be the Assault rifle, surprisingly useful if you have good concentrated control. The covenant carbine, which I think does well with being able to have plenty of ammo if you choose to go for just damage, but also really good with some headshots at mid range in general, that it can be a best friend if you are relatively good at headshots and another weapon to lower the shields. I have never really been a fan of the battle rifle or its assault cousin, as I usually find it running out of ammunition quickly, and I am just not really a good at them in general.

Other favourite weapons have come and gone, with flood you often cannot go wrong with the plasma sword. Brute shot was good one you worked out some of its kinks, but I think that I especially liked the grenade launcher, which had more of a learning curve, but interesting application. By the same bane I probably like the railgun too, which I could handle okay. The Fuel rod also a rare favourite.

I think that I actually managed to wedge out myself a place in multiplayer for some of the games, where I unlocked the armor from being especially good at back executions, requiring good use of stealth and trickery. Although, it was not with the recent game, that I just did not feel compelled to really spend time with the multiplayer either.

With the exception of the Laser, I generally do not like the charge it up and hold it weapons like the Railgun or the (IMO) very wonky Covenent grenade launcher in Reach.

Some Halo weapons that I hate:

Hold em up and release weapons generally. They take to long and are good only at a distance when you've got marine support.

The Halo 2 Brute plasma rifle. Underpowered and overheats much to quickly.

Halo 3 Brute grenades because of how underpowered they are. My hypothesis is that they were intentionally designed to primarily cause injury rather than death.

The Halo 2 plasma pistol, because they underpowered it and made the rate of fire to slow. Loved it in CE.

While I like the needler, it is useless against many targets, such as vehicles, Hunters, and Kig Yar with fist shields.

One question to any Halo players--ever throw a grenade that did not explode? This has happened to me, usually during an intense fire fight. I'm thinking that dud grenades is not something that was programmed, and that this is an operating system issue--to much is going on and the grenade explosion is mishandled. Or perhaps if you throw one to far from any targets, the game system simply deletes it rather than causing an explosion.

It's a longish time since I've played Halo.

I enjoyed the first game a great deal. The second one was almost as good, but I became increasingly annoyed at the unnecessarily complex plot developments, which I couldn't understand or bring myself to care about. There was also one ludicrous moment in Halo 2 when the player was supposed to leap into some kind of airborne vehicle as it flew past, then punch the driver to death.

I might give Halo 3 a go on the XBox 360, if I can give up my Dooming for a week or so.